This invention relates to poultry harvesting equipment, particularly to equipment for removing viscera from poultry gizzards, splitting the gizzards, and peeling the lining from the gizzards.
Poultry gizzards usually are removed from the carcass of slaughtered fowl with the crop, stomach, lungs, heart and other viscera attached thereto, and the gizzards usually are separated from the viscera by severing the connection immediately adjacent the gizzard. The gizzard is then split open between the side muscles of the gizzard and the lining peeled therefrom. The gizzard is then washed and ready for marketing.
Various automated equipment has been developed and utilized in the past to perform the steps of separating the viscera from the gizzard, for splitting open the gizzard and for peeling the gizzard. Some of the problems with the prior art equipment include improper severing of the viscera from the gizzard, cutting across instead of between the muscles of the gizzard and failing to remove the lining from the gizzard during the peeling process. Some of the prior art equipment is substantially complex and expensive in its design, yet fails to reliably perform the harvesting process. The gizzards and viscera frequently become jammed in and/or damaged by the equipment, and the equipment improperly performs the harvesting process, thereby requiring some of the gizzards to be reprocessed or, in some instances, damaging the gizzards so that they are unusuable.
Poultry gizzards sometimes contain hard objects in the cavity between the muscles, and when the gizzards with hard objects therein are harvested, the hard objects tend to obstruct the harvesting operation. For example, when the cut is made in a gizzard to split the gizzard, the cutting element may engage a stone, etc. in the gizzard which tends to retard the cutting of the gizzard and tends to cause the gizzard to be pushed out of alignment with respect to the harvesting equipment, sometimes resulting in a "cross cut" across the muscles of the gizzard. Additionally, when the lining is being peeled from the gizzards, the teeth of the rotary peeling rolls fail to grasp the lining and the gizzard remains unpeeled.